In an effort to reduce an extremely high violent rate of crime in the city of Kansas City, Missouri, the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) provided a grant to the Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) in 2011 with the expectations that the KCPD would implement innovative methods for reducing crime in this article titled Kansas City, Missouri Smart Policing Initiative From Foot Patrol to Focused Deterrence, Novak, Fox, Carr, McHale, and White (2015) provide a review of the strategies that the KCPD implemented with the funding that was provided over a four year period. We will examine the two deterrent strategies implemented in this experiment which include foot patrol by the police officers targeted in the areas that
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Kansas City averaged 100 homicides per year which was “four times the national average” (Id, 2014) and the majority of the crimes that were committed involved the use of firearms; this statistic was despite the fact that the KCPD had recovered 984.4 guns per year. Other problems plagued Kansas City’s crime increase, for instance there was also a very significant increase in violent crimes and robberies, with the majority of these crimes concentrated in two areas of Kansas City, the Central Metro and East Divisions of the city. Now that the KCPD was aware of the crime problem they along with their grant research partner the University of Missouri-Kansas were ready to implement the experiment.
The first deterrence that was implemented was not an original idea the Kansas City Foot Patrol Experiment was one that had previously been used by the city of Philadelphia and titled the Philadelphia City Foot Patrol. This experiment required “officers to get out of their vehicles and engage citizens in informal, and consensual encounters” (Id, 2015). The objective of this operation was for the officers to select target areas or “micro-hot spots” and provide a community oriented foot patrol to these areas of Kansas
Kansas City averaged 100 homicides per year which was “four times the national average” (Id, 2014) and the majority of the crimes that were committed involved the use of firearms; this statistic was despite the fact that the KCPD had recovered 984.4 guns per year. Other problems plagued Kansas City’s crime increase, for instance there was also a very significant increase in violent crimes and robberies, with the majority of these crimes concentrated in two areas of Kansas City, the Central Metro and East Divisions of the city. Now that the KCPD was aware of the crime problem they along with their grant research partner the University of Missouri-Kansas were ready to implement the experiment.
The first deterrence that was implemented was not an original idea the Kansas City Foot Patrol Experiment was one that had previously been used by the city of Philadelphia and titled the Philadelphia City Foot Patrol. This experiment required “officers to get out of their vehicles and engage citizens in informal, and consensual encounters” (Id, 2015). The objective of this operation was for the officers to select target areas or “micro-hot spots” and provide a community oriented foot patrol to these areas of Kansas